The people of St. Clementine were all curious about the disturbance in the woods the prior night, but none so much as the junior scribe, Fluer. Especially after the town guard blew it off as some lightning strike of sorts, and the fact that there was no storm last night struck Fluer as odd.

As a child, Fluer would have a question for everything, always wanting to learn, and never taking anything at face value. In her teenage years, her curious nature landed her an apprenticeship as a scribe. It turns out that she never outgrew her curiosity as she was currently sneaking into the forest to get a look for herself.

Pov: fluer

That noise last night was an explosion, and it doesn't take a genius to know that explosions don't just randomly occur. Well, save for mana rifts, but those only happen in areas with high socerzxo¹ , or mana density, and frankly, St. Clementine is on the low side when it comes to mana. Especially when you consider that St. Clementine is number four out of the ten locations with the lowest mana density in the kingdom of Capri.

Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

While I was walking, two things hit me; the realization that as much as it is fun to recall trivia, I should save the theories for when I see them myself. The other thing that hit me was much more simple, a tree branch that I walked into while lost in thought. I constantly lose my sense of awareness when something is on my mind, and the explosion was just that kind of something.

…

Arriving at the scene, it was clear that magic was involved. Throwing off my satchel, and retrieving the socerzxometer² I got as a gift for acing my first-year final exam in record time, well, record time for the town of St. Clementine at least, and scanned the around the crater. Unsurprisingly, the readings came out high.

I knew it! I tried to get the town council to assign socerzxometers to the guard, but it was boondoggle.³ because nooOooOo, “ThE GUarD WouLdN’T hAvE a UsE fOR ONe” bah, I can complain to the council later, the socerzxometer is picking up wild readings by this tree.

Huh, what’s this? A book, just right there, how incompetent is the town guard to miss this? But the readings are definitely from the book. Since nobody else will and I am quite curious, I reach out to take the book.

THAT WAS A MISTAKE